The Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God as a guide to help people live a happy and righteous life. It was not designed to scare people to death. Let's just look at one of the commandments..."Thou shalt not commit adultery"
Now I'm going to assume you're a married man and you yourself are faithful and happily married. Supposing someone comes along and has sexual relations with your wife, not even caring that she was married to you.
You eventually find out about her infidelity and that it had been going on for quite sometime. How would you react to this? I know for some people it ends up with murder or bitter divorce proceedings or someone getting physically hurt real bad just total misery for all parties.
Nobody is happy anymore, there is nothing but misery, from adultery it escalates to murder, bodily harm, or divorce.
Now supposing you and your wife are very faithful to each other because both of you truly love each other. Both of you will never be miserable in respect to your matrimonial vows, both of you will always be happy with one another. You both instinctly have obeyed God's commandment of "Thou shalt not commit adultery"
So this is just one example of how misery can enter one's life by disobeying and breaking one of God's Ten Commandments or how happiness and tranquility can enter ones's life by obeying and following one of God's Ten Commandments.
So these commandments should be really viewed as being good for the people's own sake, knowing that obeying and following the commandments brings happiness and tranquility while disobeying and breaking the commandments brings misery and despair.