 From the perspective of this argument, your suffering has no greater significance than that of anyone else, but it also has no less. You are one of the many sentient beings whose welfare is to be promoted. Moreover, you may have more effective means available to advance your own happiness than you do to advance the happiness of others. And you often know much more about yourself than you do about others. So there is scope within this view to justify prudential concern for your own future; in the early and middle stages of the path, you may end up in practice spending more time taking care of your own future needs than those of others. This kind of prudential concern is compatible with the doctrine of no self, and is not the same as egoism. Here egoism would mean attaching more intrinsic significance to your own welfare than to that of others, or even disregarding others’ welfare and merely making an effort to promote your own. Buddhists would see egoism as reflecting a damaging lack of perception of the absence of self.