I had a different take-away from that movie. My understanding was that Kirk avoided facing death/the no-win scenario his entire life. He cheated on the Kobayashi Maru and found clever ways around losing anything his entire life. It wasn't until the end of the movie that he finally had to face his "Kobayashi Maru" and deal with losing Spock. My lesson learned is that Kirk's assertion that "he doesn't believe in no-win scenarios" is naive and that how we deal with death and "how we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life, wouldn’t you say?"