For a long time now, I've struggled with my body and self-image. To put it blunt, I'm not satisfied. One of the ways I've sought to improve this was by improving my body through exercise.

However, I've also struggled for a long time with giving myself the motivation or enacting the discipline to commit myself to any kind of fitness plan long-term.

Looking back at times in the past when I DID regularly exercise, it was mainly societal/external motivation that kept me going day-by-day. The specific examples were being in a team sport and feeling ashamed after being made fun of by a girl I liked (very effective!). I'm sure there is more to it, but external pressure seems to be the common denominator. Another reason I assume external motivation, is that whenever I try (and fail) to get back into exercising regularly, it comes from some sort of external motivation. To be clear, this does include internal motivation telling me to do so, and I have genuinely wanted to do so forever, but that which is most effective is external.

The conundrum I'm facing now is that I'm in a place far from any reliable friends or connections to motivate me, but even if I was close to friends I would prefer not to rely on external motivation.

So in the absence of external motivation, how can I find in myself the internal motivation to exercise?

I know this is a difficult question for internet strangers to answer, but I figure bouncing ideas off of other people never hurts :)