NLP teaches us the skill of manipulating our submodalities to produce empowering results. Submodalities can also be manipulated in ways that could help us kick bad habits, adopt good habits and change unhealthy likes and cravings into dislikes.

For instance, an unceasing craving for ice cream can be changed into a strong dislike for ice cream by simply working with the submodalities that surround the "wanting" and "eating" of ice cream. We would start with trying to determine the individual's favorite modality (visual, kinesthetic, auditory etc) by asking him to talk about his craving for chocolate. The next step, would be to manipulate and change the submodalities of image one with that of image two in such a way that would make the individual think of the dog poo every time he craves for chocolate. For instance before asking him to describe the image of the dog poo, ask him to keep the image of the dog poo in the far. And when you are changing the submodalities of image one (the chocolate) with that of image two (the dog poo), ask the individual to bring the image of the dog poo up close and move the image of the chocolate into the far.

For example, within the visual modality, there are submodalities of brightness, distance, size and color etc. We as human beings not only have favorite "modalities" but in fact we also have favorite "submodalities" within each modality.

If you have a picture of an unpleasant experience (visual modality) in your mind then you can choose to take any element of that picture (submodalities) and use it to de-intensify the associated pain that that experience causes - for instance, you can change the visual image from bright to dark, from big to small and from colored to black & white. Changing these elements will significantly reduce the intensity of the pain that that unpleasant image triggers.