I got these ideas from a great book, "Aikido in Everyday Life", which deals with non-physical attacks and how to deal with them using Aikido.

The idea of winning is everywhere in our society, and just about everything we do can be thought of as a competition. Does this mean that competitions are wrong? Of course not. It just means that many things that we take as win/lose situation shouldn't be. Sports are the best examples of justified competitions. Of course, having sports without victors would just end up being a lot of people running around. Other things, like job promotions, school grades, relationships, etc., should not be thought of as things to win or lose. The point is, Aikido can not be thought of as a competition, because it is not the same for everyone. Put experts of soccer, basketball, football and baseball on a field together and watch to see who wins. <Wins what? What are the rules? Then again, what sport are we watching? Exactly. Each player is performing according to their respective skills. Now if we look at Aikido as sports in general, then each sport would represent each faction of Aikido that people choose to follow, whether it be the spiritual side, the physical side, the mental side, whatever. You cannot say that someone who concentrates on the physical technique is weaker because they lack the spiritual side. They choose to concentrate on the physical, and if they do excel in that area, then they are "good". The problem is that someone who chooses a different area may say that the person who focuses on the physical is "weaker". And so we get a competition based on different criteria.> You can look at it two ways: You can say that none of them will win because no one scored, or you can say that they all win because they are all good at their respective sports.  To think of it that way, every Aikidoka plays his or her own sport, Aikido is different for everyone who takes it, everyone concentrates on certain aspects, the physical training, self-defense, the mental ideologies or the spiritual paths that it offers. I read somewhere something that said "Aikido gives you yourself", and this sums up what I'm saying. no one can "win" in Aikido unless you "beat" yourself. In order to win one has to be strong, either physically, mentally, or spiritually. To say you beat someone may imply that you're stronger, say technically, but the "loser" may care about the physical aspects as much as, say, the spiritual. So all you will have accomplished is proving your strength over someone who is physically weaker, and not weaker because you are stronger, but weaker because they have chosen to not advance themselves in this area.