Welcome!

Hello and welcome to Sentiments by Shannon - I thank you for visiting my blog. As this is my first post I thought I’d share a bit about myself and what inspired me to start writing.

Let me begin by posing this question - what is sentiment? By definition the word sentiment means a thought, view, or attitude based mainly on emotion. Keyword - emotion. For as long as I can remember I never considered myself to be an emotional, much less sentimental, person. I took pride in never letting emotion rule over logic. Emotion, as I understood it, was negative and I hated feeling vulnerable. So I simply decided that I wouldn’t be emotional. Sure I lived and loved and laughed often. I had a smile for everyone and enjoyed so much in my life. Even so I began to notice an emptiness inside and it didn’t take long before it was impossible to ignore. I wondered if I would ever be truly, deeply happy and whether I was even capable of it. And so began my journey of self-discovery.

The first thing I learned about myself was that my “bucket” was nearly empty – I desperately needed more heartfelt sentiment from the people I shared my life with. (If you haven’t read it already I strongly recommend grabbing a copy of How Full is Your Bucket by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton.)

We are surrounded by sentiment every day, just stop for a moment and listen to the people around you. I’m sure you’ll agree that we all could benefit from more frequent positive sentiment in our lives. As humans we thrive on positive emotional connections and receiving sentiments like “Happy Birthday!”, “Way to Go!”, “Congratulations!”, and “Thank You!” keep our buckets full. There are so many opportunities to experience positive emotion and share it with others. When was the last time you got a hand-written note or card from someone? How did it make you feel?

With that I’ll end this post with this question – When was the last time you gave a hand-written note or card for no reason except that you felt like brightening someone’s day?