fear and misery turned faith and hope

When there is a significant life event (such as yesterday's) that effects so many of us in my generation and culture, I usually try to find something I can glean from it and take with me.  I found this quote yesterday from David Bowie: 

When asked the question: "What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?"
He responded with: "Living in Fear."

I have learned and shared with others, now, for (what seems like) a long time that if we would just pare the motives for our actions down to faith or fear, we'd all be so much better off.  Most of our instinctual, "gut" reactions are fear based.  It takes a certain discipline to refrain from acting on this and sit with the discomfort and wonder.  If we acted out of faith, what would our action be?  In most cases, it might be to not act at all (at least not right away or for the time being).  This is more difficult than any practice I currently have and yet it always pays off.  Have you tried it?  The waiting can be excruciating.  As a side note, I've found it particularly beneficial to distract myself with something that assumes all of my attention OR drown the personal fear based scenarios in my head with affirmation.

I am definitely not saying this is easy. 
But I figure, as David Bowie said,
fear = misery
and, I'll take it one step further:
faith = hope

With a little time spent reflecting on David Bowie's life yesterday, I found a quote that Iman posted a few weeks ago.  The source is unknown but the quote goes like this: 

This just takes our fearful thinking to an entirely different level, doesn't it?  What WOULD obsessing about our positive qualities be like?  I mean, we spend so much time wishing and hoping we did the smallest (or even the largest) things differently, what would it actually be like if we spent all that time ruminating on our best qualities?  Is that scary?  Why?  Maybe it's time to make a list of what our best qualities are and even if we can only think of one at a time, spend our time obsessing on THAT.   I think our world would become a better place.

p.s. I mean, don't we want this for our children?  To obsess about their good qualities?  So, why don't we want this for ourselves?  Do we think we should know better?  I still believe we know less than children do (so this argument carries no weight for me).  Do you have another one?