Hear me out for a minute. You see, here at Live Bearded we do everything we can to help you grow the best damn beard possible. From helping you understand why beard products are important and how to use them, to choosing the right beard style and showing you how to trim your beard yourself or find a barber to get the look you desire. 

But too often guys are comparing their beards to a completely unrealistic expectation. We all (me included) have seen a guy which a killer beard and thought to ourselves, "damn, I wish my beard looked that good" or something to that affect.

And what's truly made it worse is social media and all these "beard models" (is that really a thing) floating around Instagram and Facebook. We see all these pictures of the most insanely perfect beard with not a single hair out of place....here's a quick example, there's an endless supply of them floating around the interwebs.

What you don't realize is what goes into these photos behind the scenes just to get this one photo...let me break it down for you.

In order to get the "perfect shot" some guys use hair spray to hold their beards into place so it doesn't move, and then trim any and every hair that isn't absolutely perfectly in place. 

Some guys even use makeup pencils or essentially a spray paint (YES they really do) to fill in thin spots and give harder lines to their beard. Lighting plays a HUGE role in how your beard looks and for these types of pictures the lighting is of course, always perfect. And then there's photoshop and the million things you can do to an image after it's taken to alter it as well.

All of these things are done to get that one perfect shot. As soon as the guy washes his beard, does any sort of physical activity or even just goes about his day, his beard will fall out of shape a bit and no longer be "perfect".

Now don't get me wrong, we all should have goals and use photos for style inspiration for an overall look. Find a style you see and like and work towards achieving that look. Just don't beat yourself up when your beard isn't perfectly in place ALL the time and obsess over trimming every flyaway hair you see. 

It's absolutely inevitable you will have wild hairs, you will have areas that grow faster than others and hairs that grow in different direction. There will be days you wake up and your beard doesn't want to cooperate at all. We ALL have issues with our beards, we just don't notice them on each other because we are too busy worrying about our own faults.

So I am here to tell you to own the beard that YOU have. Don't sit and constantly compare yourself to others. Work to improve on your beard and embrace it with confidence! 

I truly hope you find this helpful because in the world we live in today, it's too easy to get caught up in what everybody else is doing and forget to focus on yourself. 

If you have any questions or need anything at all, don't hesitate to contact us anytime! We are always here to help support you however we can so let us know how and as always, Live Bearded Brother!