Shibaru

Hey all! So I'm pretty new to the cosmere, and I'm a little lost in how people are getting information from Sanderson's novels. I've read all of Mistborn, Stormlight, Elantris, and am working on warbreaker right now, but I seem to missing the bigger picture of what's going on. In just reading these books I noticed a few similarities, but I'm not sure how the whole cosmere explanation came to be. In one of Sanderson's books were the shards ever explained? Or world jumping? I'm a little lost on how these things came to be known. One big question I have is how the character Hoid is known to be the same person in each book? It seems that these characters could just be like Cid in Final Fantasy where each character is unrelated except by a repeating naming convention. I've seen a lot of people mention that Hoid was among the Terris people at the end of Well of Ascension, and that he is the one who smashed the pot before Vin and Elend arrived, but I don't actually see any evidence for this in the novel itself. Thanks!